Dynamic Business Model Analysis for Strategic Foresight in Production Networks

Abstract

In today’s uncertain business environments, many small and medium-sized firms organize their production resources and processes within networks. As a consequence, these firms are increasingly connected through a complex and dynamic pattern of inter-organizational flows of material and information. Within such networks, approaches focusing on a single firm’s perspective are inadequate strategic foresight. However, approaches, that explicitly consider the network perspective to enhance single firm perspectives, help firms to align flexibility with uncertainty to achieve greater robustness of their strategies. This chapter combines the introduction of a methodological approach with the practical experience from the application within a research project consisting of different application partners. Thereby, it shows an unconventional way of applying system dynamics within a strategic foresight approach in production networks. By demonstrating the application of the approach within an illustrative example, important modeling steps are shown and crucial tasks are evaluated.